


proverbs 10:12

by hurryup



Series: blind mechanism [3]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Character Study, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 04:44:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9641243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hurryup/pseuds/hurryup
Summary: There was no Great Spirit for Lenalee. If such a thing even existed, it could be found in neither the Black Order's chapel nor her hazy memories of the Sānhuáng.(She supposed her immortal soul must be suffering from a terrible anemia.)





	

Upon her return to China, Lenalee was almost surprised by how little she felt. There was no whisper of her, there. Not in the stonework, not in the rivers, not in the complex nexus of Han characters; the shape and sound of the language was lost to her. She saw them, time and time again, embossed in paperwork sent from the Chinese branch. There was no identification when she traced them with her fingertip. No hint or suggestion that they belonged to her, or that she belonged to them; there was no release. There was no homecoming.  
  
That's the funny thing about _home_ , isn't it? A home is a thing built from memories. Well, her memories of China were vague, impossibly far away. They might as well have belonged to a stranger. That little girl who had run giggling across the rice mats, only to be scooped up into her brother's arms; she was long gone.  
  
There was no trace of her left.  
  
Lenalee, from the time of her youth, was educated by the Roman Catholic Order. It was an education she tolerated without putting up a fuss. She'd sat and nodded emptily through devotional studies, feeling more like an observer in mass than a participant. She moved through the motions wordlessly, always stealing a look to the side to copy the example of Komui's deference. They asked her to pray. She prayed. The words of the scripture moved her lips and nothing more.  
  
The years crawled by, and she crawled with them without once feeling the spark of religious zeal that had driven the Church— that great institution of moral artificers— to enact their bloody Crusades. When the time came for her to study the Bible, her teacher, a belated disciple of scholasticism, taught Lenalee that virtue would suffice for happiness. Purity was godliness. She did not learn of the _shén_ , or cosmic gods, or the spirits of her birthright. She did not look to the moon and see women laughing there. The white robe of the Silk God, promised by her distant past, was never hers to wear.  
  
She could still vaguely remember the arches of temples. They were upheld by vast, vaulting poles, the nacre and the paint peeling ever so slightly. Back then, she'd thought they looked like the trunks of red trees; trees stretching up high into the sky, up into an enormous canopy of duogong bracketing. All the same, she couldn't remember praying there. She had no idea if she'd ever been taught such a thing. She did, however, remember the rain running down the rush-mat roof... how the water had seeped into those graystone steps. How they'd slowly become as black as night.  
  
There was no Great Spirit for Lenalee. If such a thing existed, it could be found in neither the Black Order's chapel nor her hazy memories of the Sānhuáng.  
  
She supposed her immortal soul must be suffering from a terrible anemia. The helpful numina of the woods, rivers, and mountains had disappeared into the vast underground of her unconscious, along with the fox-men and god-men they served. There, they lead an ignominious existence among other relics of her past. Silly folk tales. Childhood fantasies. Bits of some mythology she didn't belong to.  
  
Not anymore, at least.  
  
If she asked Komui, he might remember the names of these god-men. The local deities of their province. Their petitions and their prayers. Was his imagination still inflamed by that unfathomable source of creation, the Jade Emperor? Did he remember his rites? When the bodies of the fallen were anointed for safe passage into heaven, which guide did he invoke for them? Komui still hugged her, beamed, and wished her good fortune whenever the Chinese new year came around. He'd make the two of them a pot of tea and fiddle with a colossal disaster of fireworks. Then again, it was hard to say if that was a genuine expression of celebrating culture. Komui would find any excuse to spend a little time with his sister, to whine and fuss and pout and absolutely _smother_ the air from her lungs...

To laugh over that pot of green tea.  
  
(The taste reached her lips, but did not stir her memory.)  
  
Lenalee didn't have the heart to call Komui a nuisance. Not when he'd abandoned everything for her sake, including his own immortals. Bound to her bed, she hadn't been there on the day the Church baptized him. All the same, she was certain she'd have cried. She would have cried for the both of them, cried the tears Komui would not allow himself.  
  
_For all His goodness,_ Lenalee often thought to herself, eyes dropping down to where skinny knees became black boots, _God doesn't do very much about anything, does he?_  
  
And that wasn't a selfish thought, was it? How could it be? After all, she hardly needed a God capable of answering the every demand of her imagination. Just one that cared enough not to steal her freedom. God's gift had sealed her fate. It had sealed her brother's, too.  
  
If theirs was a conversion, it was a conversion by the sword.  
  
The Vatican's God, Central's God, The Order's God, and now Lenalee's God; oh, he was a merciless conqueror. A demanding one, too. He'd done much more than steal away a little girl and corrupt the culture in her beyond salvaging. Oh, oh no. Like any great pragmatist, He demanded fair compensation for each of his gifts. As He gave life, He took it, without discerning between the faithful and faithless.  
  
_(Small hands joined together in prayer, clear music of the bell, gold coins in a clay bowl. Waste.)_  
  
You couldn't blame her for hating God.  
  
_(Graystone flooding black with blood, makeshift linen shrouds, everything into nothing. Waste.)_  
  
She owed Him nothing.  
  
_(Komui's hands covering hers, something so simple and so saving in the touch, it's alright, it's alright, you don't have to be alone anymore, never again, never again I promise I will I promise I will I promise I will take you home.)_

Nothing at all.  
  
_(I will take you home.)_  
  
Lenalee would not put God's gift, his consummate damnation, to waste. If her Innocence could be used to protect that which God would not, she'd accept it. She would make it enough, make it hers— and he would never, _ever_ touch her family again.  
  
Her life was dominated not by any king in his high heaven, but instead the the goddess Love; life's greatest and most bitter illusion.

**Author's Note:**

> hurryupfic on tumblr  
> @fuckhowardlink on twitter


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